A Mirror Held Up to the Human Heart
The
third sermon in a 5-part series on the Revelation to John
University Congregational United
Two weeks ago,
Last week,
This morning, we will explore
sections of Revelation that leave most liberal Christians embarrassed,
confused, or angry. They are the kinds
of texts that many of our Christian sisters and brothers use to predict exactly
how God will judge the world and bring history to an end. Texts like these inspired Hal Lindsey in the
1970s to write his best-selling book The Late, Great Planet Earth. And they inspire Tim LaHaye’s
and Jerry Jenkins’ Left Behind serious of novels, which have sold over
64 million copies.
In Revelation, many Christian see
concrete predictions of how God will bring this world to an end. Such interpretations draw from the work of a
19th-century English clergyman named John Nelson Darby. Christians scan this book to determine the
precise date of the rapture, when Jesus secretly returns to the earth and takes
all true believers with him to heaven.
Following the rapture comes seven years of tribulation, when those ‘left
behind’ on earth suffer horrible things under the reign of the Antichrist. In the Left Behind series, the
Antichrist is the former secretary-general of the United Nations. (This says a lot more about how the authors
of that series feel about the United Nations than it says about the mind of
God!) During the tribulation, some
people will become believers. When
Christ returns at the end of these seven years of tribulation, he will defeat
the forces of the Antichrist at Armageddon, which is a large plain in
There are lots of reasons I cannot
embrace this interpretation of Revelation. Even if we dispense with the theology of such
an interpretation and just look at the text itself, we can see Revelation
resists any attempts to make it a chronological account of how the end will
come.
Listen to what happens when the angel
blows the first trumpet in Revelation 8:
The first angel blew his trumpet,
and
there came hail and fire, mixed with blood,
and
they were hurled to the earth;
and a third
of the earth was burned up,
and
a third of the trees were burned up,
and
all green grass was burned up.
(Rev. 8.7, New Revised Standard Version)
References to “a third” of something
being destroyed mean God’s judgment is partial, not total. And a partial judgment always means there’s
hope. Except for the grass. No hope for the grass. The grass is toast – all burned up.
But if we move ahead only eight verses in
our chronological account of the end time, here’s what we hear:
The fifth angel blew his trumpet . . .
[and] from the smoke came locusts on the
earth,
and . . .
[the locusts] were told not to damage the grass of the earth
or
any green growth of any tree . . .
(Rev. 9.1-4, NRSV)
If the first trumpet burned up all the grass,
why at the fifth trumpet are the locusts told they can’t damage the grass
(Koester: 97)? I don’t think it’s
because God was trying to pull one over on the locusts.
Clearly, John of Patmos did not intend for us to read Revelation in a
literal, linear way. John has written a
work of power and imagination that keeps circling back on itself.
If I try to read the
disturbing, startling images in Revelation as a literal account of how God will
bring history to a close, I’m left to agree with Martin Luther that in
Revelation, “Christ is neither taught nor known” (Koester: 19). But if I approach Revelation with the
question, “What does this say about God and God’s relationship to us?” then in
its pages I hear a saving Word.
Especially for us liberal Christians, I hear a saving Word.
I believe Revelation
calls us liberal Christians to repent of the ways we have turned God into a
mild-mannered, kindly grandparent who really can’t do much of anything in this
world without our help. Revelation calls us to repent of the ways we have
turned the love of God into a love that is solely forgiving and compassionate,
and stripped God of a love that can rage.
The Judeo-Christian God has a love that rages over what humans are doing
to this world God has made. God rages at
our inhumanity toward one another. And
Revelation calls us to repent of the ways we liberal Christians
talk of God’s justice without talking about God’s judgment. God’s love for justice means that in some
mysterious way that is not for us to know, God will judge all of us for the
ways we act with cruelty, apathy, arrogance, and violence. And God’s judgment of us mysteriously will be
a part of our healing and the healing of all creation.
If we Christians are to help heal an
unjust, cruel, and violent world, we need a God who is more than a
mild-mannered, kindly grandparent.
We need to restore this embarrassing and
unknowable God to the center of our worship. We need to worship a God who rages
at injustice, so we can bring our rage into worship.
And we need to worship a God who holds
all of us accountable for how we live, so we can repent of the ways we deny
others love. And sp we can find
forgiveness and commitment for bolder loving.
The
writer of Revelation “holds up a mirror to the human heart, and doesn’t bother
to ask if we like what we see there” (Kathleen Norris: ix). We know the human heart births profound acts
of compassion as well as acts of unspeakable cruelty. So at the center of our worship, we need a God who is
both Raging Lover and Compassionate Judge.
A God who finally remains Absolute Mystery, and yet comes to us in Jesus
and is as close as our next breath.
Let’s look at the two reasons I believe
liberal Christians need to restore the God of Revelation to the center of our
worship.
First: We need to worship a God who rages
at injustice, so we can bring our rage into worship.
Listen to this odd scene
from the 6th chapter of Revelation.
The author, John of Patmos, is speaking.
When [Jesus Christ] the Lamb opened the
fifth seal,
I saw the
souls of those killed because they held firm
in
their witness to the Word of God.
They were
gathered under the Altar,
and
cried out in loud prayers,
“Sovereign
Lord, holy and true,
how
long will it be before You judge and avenge our blood
on
the inhabitants of the earth?”
(Rev. 6.9-10, Eugene Peterson translation
and NRSV)
These don’t sound like the saints I’ve read
about – those people who face suffering and death filled with a forgiving
spirit toward their persecutors. Rage
fills these murdered faithful ones. And
they want revenge. But notice: they
don’t carry out any acts of revenge themselves.
They bring their rage and their thirst for vengeance
to the only place such violent feelings belong: the Altar of God. They bring their rage to worship, and lift it
up to God with neither shame nor guilt.
Much
in this world enrages me. And yet I
hesitate to bring that rage here and ask God and this community to hear
it. But that is what Revelation invites
us to do. This God who rages at
injustice calls us to bring our rage here.
Not to act out. But to lift up as
prayer. To bring before each other and
before the God who can hold our rage so the Holy Spirit can inspire us to
commit ourselves to help heal whatever birthed the rage in the first place. Revelation is very clear: Humans are not to
carry out acts of vengeance. Vengeance
is to be left up to God.
But
for us to be able to trust God will respond to the injustices that birth our
rage, we have to believe God hears those prays of
rage. Revelation offers that assurance.
Revelation
8 picks up where just we left off. The
murdered saints under the altar pray for justice.
[Then]
there was silence in heaven for about half an hour.
Then
the angel [at the altar] threw fire upon the earth;
and
there were peals of thunder,
rumblings,
flashes of lightning, and an earthquake . . .
The second angel blew his
trumpet,
and
something like a great mountain,
burning
with fire, was thrown into the sea.
A
third of the sea became blood,
a third of the living creatures in the
sea died,
and a third of the ships were destroyed.
(Rev. 8.1, 5, 8, NRSV)
If we hear this as a prediction of what God
actually is going to do to an unrepentant creation, it probably offends many of
us. But if we hear it as a disturbing,
startling image of God, we find here a word of hope. In Revelation, rumblings, lightning, and
earthquakes means God is present. What
this passage says to me is that when God’s people cry out for justice, God is
present. And in mysterious ways beyond our imagining, God
responds to those prayers. God responds
by working to transform the sin and evil of injustice into forces for healing
and hope.
What freedom that gives us. We don’t need to pretend any more on Sunday
mornings. We can bring our whole selves
into worship, and lift our most embarrassed and shameful feelings before
God. No more silence about our rage and
our desire for vengeance. Because
Revelation reminds us the God we worship is a God who also rages over injustice. And so this God will hear our cries, and lead
us to transform them into a healing power nothing can stop.
Second:
We need to worship a God who holds all of us accountable for how we live, so we
can repent of the ways we deny others love.
And so we can find forgiveness and commitment for bolder loving.
By
the end of Revelation 9, six of the seven trumpets have blown. Lots of horrible things have happened. And you’d think that the people witnessing
fire and seas turning to blood and grass burning and locusts attacking those
who are not God’s Chosen would begin to wonder if it might be smart to follow
this God after all. But all of these
signs of judgment leave these non-Christians unphased.
The remaining men and
women
who
weren’t killed by these weapons
went
on their merry way –
didn’t
change their way of life,
didn’t
quit worshipping demons,
didn’t
quit centering their lives upon lumps of gold
and
silver
and
brass,
hunks
of stone that couldn’t see or hear or move.
There
wasn’t a sign of a change of heart.
They
plunged right on in their murderous, occult,
promiscuous, and thieving ways.
(Rev. 9.20-21, Eugene Peterson translation)
In these words, I hear God saying to us, “You
know you worship false gods: you look for meaning and put your faith in money,
status, grades, busyness, your bodies; in unrealistic standards for what it
means to be an ideal parent, child, spouse, friend, employee, or
Christian. You worship a god who cannot
see you, hear you, comfort you, or lead you to the deep joy that comes from
knowing you are My Beloved. So admit
that. Confess that. Clear away all of that clutter and fear and
futility. And let Me fill that
cleared-out space. Let me fill you with
My love that calms all fears and names you as my Beloved. When I free you from fear, and when you
truly know your name is God’s Beloved, you can step out into this world
and commit yourself to loving it with extravagant boldness. Forgiven, set free, emboldened by my Grace,
you will know fullness of life and fullness of joy.”
If the God we worship is
not able to confront us with the shallowness of our commitments, if the God we
worship is not able to forgive us and convince us we are forgiven so the guilt
and shame that paralyze us from living is wiped away, if the God we worship is
not able to assure us our true name is God’s Beloved, then the God we
worship is a pathetic imitation of the God of our ancestors. As people who worship false gods, need
forgiveness, and hunger to know our true name because the world has given us so
many ugly names, we need to worship the God of Revelation who walks by our side
so we can live with bold commitment into God’s future.
Revelation
is not a book of the Bible we liberal Christians can afford to ignore any
longer. If we do not know this book we
cannot challenge its dangerous misuse.
In one of the volumes of the Left Behind series, the risen Christ
says to a follower of Christ’s archenemy, “Death is too good for you. You are sentenced to eternity in the lake of
fire” (Glorious Appearing, volume 12 of the series). Such a portrayal of Jesus easily leads us to
believe torturing people we view as our archenemies is not only justified; it
is a faithful response. Given this
worldview, what would Jesus do at the Abu-Ghraib
prison? He’d torture his
archenemies.
Go and do likewise.
The world we live in is often a cruel, unjust,
violent place. When we hold a mirror up
to our hearts, we see in them the cruelty, injustice, and violence of our
world. And we see great goodness in
those same hearts and in that same world.
A God who can do nothing to address creation’s brokenness without us, a
God who has little to offer us except a mild-mannered, kindly love, cannot give
us what we need to be faithful in such a world.
And this tame, inoffensive God of liberal Christianity cannot bring us
to repentance, and cannot transform the sin and evil of this world into agents
of healing and hope. The God of
Revelation is a God we need for the living of these days. May we be open to meeting this One who is
Raging Lover and Compassionate Judge. May we be open to meeting this One who
finally remains Absolute Mystery, and yet comes to us in Jesus and is as close
as our next breath.
Amen.
Jayson Byassee, “En-raptured,” The Christian Century,
Vol. 121, No. 8, pp. 18-22.
Adela Yarbro
Collins, Crisis and Catharsis: The Power of
the Apocalypse,
Craig
R. Koester, Revelation and the End of All
Things,
Eerdmans,
2001. (This is the single best
commentary on the
Revelation to John I have come
across. Very readable and
insightful.)
Kathleen
Norris, Introduction to Revelation. (I
don’t have the complete
reference)
Christopher
C. Rowland, “Revelation,” The New Interpreters Commentary,
Volume
XII,